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Austrian Supreme Court Rules on the Validity of a Jurisdiction Clause Based on a General Reference to Terms of Purchase on a Website
By Biset Sena Günes, Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg
Recently, on 25 October 2023, the Austrian Supreme Court (‘OGH’) [2 Ob 179/23x, BeckRS 2023, 33709] ruled on whether a jurisdiction clause included in the terms of purchase (‘ToP’) was valid when a written contract made reference to the website containing the ToP but did not provide the corresponding internet link. The Court held that such a clause does not meet the formal requirements laid down under Article 25 of the Brussels I (recast) Regulation and, hence, is invalid. The judgment is undoubtedly of practical relevance for the conclusion of international commercial contracts that make reference to digitally available general terms and conditions (‘GTCs’), and it is an important follow-up to the decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) in the cases of El Majdoub (C-322/14, available here) and Tilman (C-358/21, available here).
Who can bite the Apple? The CJEU can shape the future of online damages and collective actions
Written by Eduardo Silva de Freitas (Erasmus University Rotterdam), member of the Vici project Affordable Access to Justice, financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), www.euciviljustice.eu.
Introduction
In the final weeks leading up to Christmas in 2023, the District Court of Amsterdam referred a set of questions to the CJEU (DC Amsterdam, 20 December 2023, ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2023:8330; in Dutch). These questions, if comprehensively addressed, have the potential to bring clarity to longstanding debates regarding jurisdictional conflicts in collective actions. Despite being rooted in competition law with its unique intricacies, the issues surrounding the determination of online damage locations hold the promise of illuminating pertinent questions. Moreover, the forthcoming judgment is expected to provide insights into the centralization of jurisdiction in collective actions within a specific Member State, an aspect currently unclear. Recalling our previous discussion on the Dutch class action under the WAMCA in this blog, it is crucial to emphasize that, under the WAMCA, only one representative action can be allowed to proceed for the same event. In instances where multiple representative foundations seek to bring proceedings for the same event without reaching a settlement up to a certain point during the proceedings, the court will appoint an exclusive representative. This procedural detail adds an additional layer of complexity to the dynamics of collective actions under the WAMCA.
One, Two, Three… Fault? CJEU Rules on Civil Liability Requirements under the GDPR
Marco Buzzoni, Doctoral Researcher at the Luxembourg Centre for European Law (LCEL) and PhD candidate at the Sorbonne Law School, offers a critical analysis of some recent rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union in matters of data protection.
In a series of three preliminary rulings issued on 14th December and 21st December 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union (‘CJEU’) was called upon again to rule on the interpretation of Article 82 of the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’). While these rulings provide some welcome clarifications regarding the civil liability of data controllers, their slightly inconsistent reasoning will most likely raise difficulties in future cases, especially those involving cross-border processing of personal data.
News
AAPrIL’s June online seminar: The Law of the Arbitration Agreement – Australasian Perspectives
On Wednesday, 11 June 2025, the Australasian Association of Private International Law (AAPrIL) will hold its latest instalment of its online Seminar Series, as Timothy Lindsay of Lindsay Francis & Mangan presents on ‘The Law of the Arbitration Agreement – Australasian Perspectives’.
The topic:
Contracts with international arbitration agreements can engage a complex interaction of different laws: the governing law of the contract, the law of the seat, and the law of the arbitration agreement itself. Parties to international commercial contracts usually address the first two of these issues, but are often silent as to the law of the arbitration agreement. A light has recently shone on this well-known issue by the United Kingdom’s Arbitration Act 2025, which includes a new default rule for determining the law of the arbitration agreement, and similar changes to the Rules of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre, as well as developing case law in other jurisdictions. How might Australian and New Zealand courts react? Read more
Open Position as a Research Associate at Freiburg University
The Institute for Comparative and Private International Law (Department 3) at Freiburg University (Germany) is seeking a Research Associate (m/f/d), 26%, to begin as soon as possible. Read more
ZEuP – Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht 2/2025
A new issue of ZEuP – Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht is now available and includes contributions on EU private law, comparative law and legal history, legal unification, private international law, and individual European private law regimes. The full table of content can be accessed here.
The following contributions might be of particular interest for the readers of this blog:
- Anspruchsverjährung im deutsch-spanischen Rechtsverkehr
David Cuenca Pinkert and Alexander Kronenberg on the statute of limitation in cross-border situations involving Germany and Spain: Against the background of the relevance of the application of foreign law in practice, the article analyses the institute of the statute of limitations under Spanish substantive law and also deals with similarities and differences to German law as well as selective references to conflict of laws and particularities. Due to its practical relevance, the article focuses on the treatment of the limitation period for tortious claims for damages, especially as a result of road traffic accidents. - EGMR „Klimaseniorinnen“ – Konsequenzen für private Klimaklagen?
Marc-Philippe Weller and Franka Weckner comments on the decision by the ECtHR in Klimaseniorinnen and discuss the consequences of this decision for climate litigation brought before civil courts.